Paul Cohen-Portheim: questions of nationalism,messianism and nostalgia in a prison camp in England, 1914–1918

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the little-known Jewish writer Paul Cohen-Portheim (1880–1932) and his notions of nationalism and Zionism. Born in Berlin to Austrian parents of Sephardic origin, Cohen-Portheim was interned during the First World War in various English prison camps. This experience profoundly affected his intellectual outlook and he dedicated much of his effort to the fight against nationalism. It was in the English prison camps that he developed an eclectic theory of nationalism which combines a quasi-evolutionary progress towards global justice with a messianic notion of Zionism. The Jewish people play a crucial role in Cohen-Portheim’s vision of a world devoid of nationalism, whose absurdity is disclosed in the arrival of Zionism. Juxtaposing Europe’s crisis of culture and Asia’s spiritual vitality, Cohen-Portheim ascribes to Zionism a bridging of the gap that separates Europe and Asia, and fragments modern nationalistic man. This article follows Cohen-Portheim’s intellectual development and highlights shifts and continuities in his writing, arguing that he shows two different types of nostalgia, namely a longing for the East as developed in his early works and a longing for the past as displayed in his last major work.     

Liquid Assets: Madeira Wine and Cultural Capital among Lowcountry Planters, 1735–1900

This article explores the history of the South Carolina and Georgia elites’ passion for madeira wine. It describes the nature of madeira and the characteristics that made the wine unique. By historical accidents, planters and merchants developed an ardent taste for madeira and over time this fondness became elevated to a tradition for collecting. Employing Bourdieu’s concepts of multiple forms of capital, the article demonstrates that madeira became an important form of cultural capital as an elite consumer good. However, reduced circumstances resulting from the economic disruptions of the Civil War brought an end to madeira culture by 1900.     

British Diplomacy,Propaganda, and War Strategy and the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute over Transylvania in 1939–40

Abstract

Between 1914 and 1935, the cities of Vienna and Pressburg/Bratislava were linked by an electric railway known as the Pressburgerbahn. More than just a line of transportation, the railway became intertwined with the complex politics of identity in Pressburg. The Pressburgerbahn presented nationalists in the Habsburg Empire with a dilemma: it had the potential to contribute to the unification of the nation, but at the same time was transnational by definition. This paradox generated a heated controversy about the Pressburgerbahn between Magyar nationalists and the predominantly German-speaking Pressburg bourgeoisie. Using biologized rhetoric, Hungarian politicians and journalists portrayed their nation as a body politic that was disfigured by having a railway ‘vein’ cross the border into Austria, in particular from such a peripheral location as Pressburg. By contrast, the discourse of the German-speaking bourgeoisie was firmly anchored in an imperial, supra-ethnic landscape. This controversy was replayed following the incorporation of the renamed city of Bratislava into Czechoslovakia in 1919: the Prague-based Ministry of Railways employed the rhetoric of the railway as an integrating structure within the body politic, while the eventual closure of the Pressburgerbahn in 1935 was closely connected to the belated nationalization of Bratislava. The railway to Vienna thus became a symbol of the liminal status of the town as a whole, in terms of nation, geography, politics and culture.     

Soviet–Japanese relations and the strategic interests of the Guomindang and the CCP – Chiang Kai‐shek's planning of sanctions against the CCP in 1943

When in 1943 the Guomindang launched its third wave of anti‐communist campaigns, Mao Zedong considered that Chiang Kai‐shek had acted in the belief that Japan would soon invade the Soviet Union. Hitherto, Chinese historians have either ignored Mao's judgment or failed to provide convincing explanations for it. There are two reasons for this attitude: first, historians have failed to appreciate the strategic implications of the relationship between the Soviet Union and Japan for relations between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); and second, relevant evidence regarding the events has not been available in document on Chiang. This essay answers questions raised by both points. Most commentators have claimed that this third anti‐Communist push ended by the middle or late July of 1943. However, Chiang in fact continued to make plans to mop up Shaanbei (the Communist‐controlled northern Shaanxi area) and impose sanctions on the Communists. The formulation, revision and eventual abandonment of Chiang's plans are also addressed in this essay.